Department of Justice anti-trust suit that had been filed in 1974.
This stayed in effect until AT&T’s forced divestiture in 1984, the conclusion of a U.S. They set the rates the phone companies could charge and determined what services and equipment each could offer.
Public utility commissions in state and local jurisdictions were appointed regulators of AT&T and the nation’s independent phone companies, while the FCC regulated long-distance services conducted across state lines. A year later, the systems were returned to private ownership, AT&T resumed its monopolistic hold, and by 1934 the government again acted, this time agreeing to allow it to operate as a “regulated monopoly” under the jurisdiction of the FCC. Under this commitment, AT&T agreed to divest itself of Western Union and provide long-distance services to independent phone exchanges.ĭuring World War I, the government nationalized telephone and telegraph lines in the United States from June 1918 to July 1919, when, after a joint resolution of Congress, President Wilson issued an order putting them under the direction of the U.S. At the urging of the public and AT&T competitors, the government began to investigate the company for anti-trust violations, thus forcing the 1913 Kingsbury Commitment, an agreement between AT&T vice president Nathan Kingsbury and the office of the U.S. Its president, Theodore Vail, urged at the time that a monopoly could most efficiently operate the nation’s far-flung communications network. By 1907, AT&T had a near monopoly on phone and telegraph service, thanks to its purchase of Western Union. In 1915 the transcontinental telephone line began operating. telephone system to drive down stock prices of all phone companies and thus make it easier for Bell to acquire smaller competitors.īy 1900 there were nearly 600,000 phones in Bell’s telephone system that number shot up to 2.2 million phones by 1905, and 5.8 million by 1910. At one point in time, Bell System employees purposely denigrated the U.S. In 1880, Bell (in the photo below) merged this company with others to form the American Bell Telephone Company and in 1885 American Telegraph and Telephone Company (AT&T) was formed it dominated telephone communications for the next century. Three years later, almost 49,000 telephones were in use. In 1877-78, the first telephone line was constructed, the first switchboard was created and the first telephone exchange was in operation. Bell began his research in 1874 and had financial backers who gave him the best business plan for bringing it to market. While Italian innovator Antonio Meucci (pictured at left) is credited with inventing the first basic phone in 1849, and Frenchman Charles Bourseul devised a phone in 1854, Alexander Graham Bell won the first U.S.
Telephone Predictions The Development of the TelephoneĪs with many innovations, the idea for the telephone came along far sooner than it was brought to reality. Telegraph usage faded as radio became easy to use and popularized as radio was being developed, the telephone quickly became the fastest way to communicate person-to-person after television was perfected and content for it was well developed, it became the dominant form of mass-communication technology the internet came next, and newspapers, radio, telephones, and television are being rolled into this far-reaching information medium. Printing remained the key format for mass messages for years afterward, but the telegraph allowed instant communication over vast distances for the first time in human history. This timeline is provided to help show how the dominant form of communication changes as rapidly as innovators develop new technologies.Ī brief historical overview: The printing press was the big innovation in communications until the telegraph was developed.
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